Down in nowhere USA (a small town in Illinois, New Loffville, to be exact) a shitty teenage party continues, just before midnight. Bottles strewn about, host nowhere to be found, and police likely on the way by the amount of noise.

"Have you SEEN her hair?" prompts a horde of preppy girls to laugh uproariously. An out of towner created a horde of fawning girls (alcohol access helped) and displaced an area for themselves. A pack of drugged-out kids remains shambling around as if zombies, trying to find a place to get away from the comments.

"Turn that shit OFF ALREADY!" yells a drunken party-goer. the music had been so bad that the radio had been turned on to replace it. Arguments already ensued after someone decided that they were in control (he turned on some trance-classical station), and it currently rests on a rap station playing a song that could be described as 'bass with no discernible lyrics' (the dissenter was hauled out back by a jock and is nowhere to be seen).

"Wait, Thea? Are you leaving already?" starts the conversation this story is here for.

"… I said don't remove the bullet, on account of it possibly blocking an artery and preventing you from bleeding out, but okay, I guess I don't know what goes into bullets so perhaps they're super poisonous if left near your blood supply?"

She sighs. "Ugh. I have no idea what people's problem is with socialist healthcare. But anyway. How did you get shot? Like, seriously, this isn't a ridiculously crime-ridden town or anything, and this was outside the Midnight Hour – how?"

"Not actually sure if guns are off during the Hour, kinda hazy on when I actually got hit... Focusing, I said I woke up in a tiny room with labcoats coming in and out. I broke out of this, like, government base thing. Outskirts of town, concealable entrance, mostly underground as far as I saw."

And as a side anecdote, "Shadows in government areas are fucking difficult."

She frowns disbelievingly. "Oookay, coming back to that later but that still doesn't explain how or when you got shot. Like, did you just go unconscious and forget when you got hit or what? I… I just don't get how you can be hazy on when you got shot."